What Would We Lose From a Regionalized Internet?

Vegan Pagan asks: "If the internet was separated into regions, how much would you lose? How often do you visit other countries' web sites? How often do you e-mail people in other countries? Do you ever search in a language other than English, and if you do, how often does it turn up foreign vs domestic sites? What would foreigners lose by not being able to visit US-hosted sites, and how quickly would they be able to recreate what they lost? What other process that we are not normally aware of depend on a borderless internet? I find that although I often read in-depth news about other countries, the sites I get that news from are usually hosted in USA, and I only bother to read in English. Would the Americans who report world news be hindered by a segregated internet, or do they already have the means to overcome such barriers? How much more expensive and complicated would it be to access sites outside of 'your' internet, and how much slower would it be?"

Re:Freedom Goes Down, Gov't Control Goes Up...

[polioptera griseoapt]

I very much agree. So, to add to the list:

• ssh (was for the longest time only available from abroad)
• decent encryption (hosted abroad)
• BBC (try it, better than most US news sources, ALSO regarding the US)
• Ocaml (developed and hosted in France)
• Python (I bet originally this was not hosted in the US, even though van Rossum is now at Google)
• SuSE Linux
• LOTS of open source projects
• Well, linux! Linux was started abroad.
• Email/web would instantaneously cease to be the main means of scientific communication, as there is research all over the world.
• Think at companies that do commerce or have subsidiaries offshore...

Frankly, a regional internet is a ridiculous idea, even more so that a regional phone network.

World news in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but if you think you're reading 'world' news from a USA site, you're sadly mistaken. I've never seen a media that finds it so difficult to grasp the concept of countries - many countries - outside their own country.

Read http://news.bbc.co.uk/ [bbc.co.uk] and see what you're missing.

Re:Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

tentacle porn comes from japan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle_porn [wikipedia.org], not china/korea

Re:Freedom Goes Down, Gov't Control Goes Up...

[MMaestro]

The US is getting close to making sure all encrypted communication has back doors for the government.

Wow, you need to lay off on the 1990 paranoid theories. Back doors into software are so easily cracked (50~100 corporate programmers versus 500~1000 skilled/curious/hobbist "lets take it apart and see how it works just for fun" programmers online) no programmer uses them anymore.